Phil Bauhaus continued his winning streak following the Tour of Slovenia, taking his 6th win of the season on the opening stage of Tour de Pologne. Bauhaus timed his sprint to perfection to beat Jose Hodeg (Deceuninck – Quick Step) to the line after great work from the team.
The first stage of the 2021 Tour de Pologne started in Lubin, eastern Poland. After 216 fairly flat kilometres, riders arrived in Chelm. This was not a typical sprint stage as riders tackled cobblestones in the last 600m with a climb peaking at 8%.
From the start, three riders went into the breakaway and the peloton never gave them an advantage of more than seven minutes. Another late escape by another rider was pulled back before entering the final circuit of 7.5km. It all came down to the final sprint where the team did a great job positioning Phil to the front for the sprint.
Today’s winner, Phil Bauhaus: “I was super confident with our sprinting group to do a super good result today. We’ve had an amazing season so far and we prepared really good for this race. The race was pretty controlled, with three guys in the beginning. It was a long stage, but we took control of it with Kevin. Then 15km to go it started to be a little nervous, but we were together as a team, and the guys did amazing in the final circuit. I did a massive pull to get to the front where Haussler was. I was a bit nervous as I was on Gaviria’s wheel and he left a gap to the Quickstep guys 300m to go, so I had to chase it, and it was a bit uphill. I saved a bit of energy for the last 150 meters, had another kick. I was focused to catch Hodeg from Quickstep, and I made it.”
Our sports director Tim Harris said: “I’m very happy with today’s win. We planned to have a peloton sprint today. The early break went away and got 6 and a half minutes, so we put Kevin Inkelaar to work to bring back the move, and it came back earlier than expected, about 15km to go, then another group of 3 got away which was very dangerous, but the team worked really well with Eros Capecchi and guys to bring it back. On the finishing circuit, the team did a perfect job to bring Phil in the position and he did a perfect sprint and won, and took the yellow jersey. All in all, we can’t complain about the day, we are very happy.”
Rolf Aldag was also satisfied with today’s performance: “Everybody played their part, Haussler and Inkelaar were riding all day long, Sieberg was there for positioning. Even if Matej has ambitions of riding GC, he was still not saving himself. So riders had multiple tasks, as we did lately and at Tour de France as we are not shooting for just one goal. That needs 100% commitment from the riders and that’s what we got today. With such a talented team and commitment we are bound to win.”
